Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar (Alexandrina Maria da Costa)

Who was Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar?

Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar, born Alexandrina Maria da Costa, was a Portuguese farm girl who spent thirty years in bed, paralyzed, and turned that bed into an altar. She offered every pain for sinners, relived the Passion of Christ in her body, and for more than thirteen years took no food but the Eucharist. When Pope John Paul II beatified her in 2004, he summed up her life in her own three words: "suffer, love, make reparation." We keep her feast on October 13.

The life of Blessed Alexandrina

A strong country girl

Alexandrina was born on March 30, 1904, in Balazar (also spelled Balasar), a rural parish in the north of Portugal. Her family was devout, and she grew up a lively, strong girl who could do a man's share of work in the fields to help keep the household going.

The leap from the window

On Holy Saturday of 1918, when she was fourteen, three men broke into the house and tried to assault Alexandrina, her sister Deolinda and a young apprentice girl. To keep her purity, Alexandrina jumped from a window, a fall of about four meters. She survived, but the injuries were many, and the doctors called her condition irreversible.

For a few years she could still drag herself to church. From April 14, 1925, she was confined to bed, completely paralyzed, and she stayed there for the rest of her life, about thirty years.

A vocation in a sickbed

Slowly she came to see her suffering as her calling: to be a victim soul, offering herself with Christ for the salvation of sinners. The Vatican biography records words she said Jesus spoke to her one day: "I want that while your heart is filled with suffering, on your lips there is a smile." Visitors found her cheerful.

The Passion and the Eucharistic fast

From October 3, 1938, to March 24, 1942, every Friday for about three hours, Alexandrina lived through the Passion of Jesus. During those hours, the Vatican biography says, her paralysis seemed to be lifted, and she followed the Stations of the Cross with her body, in great physical and spiritual pain, including temptations against the faith. Not everyone believed her, and some in the Church criticized her.

Then, from March 27, 1942, until her death, she took no food at all except Holy Communion. That lasted about thirteen years and seven months. Her weight fell as low as 33 kilos, about 73 pounds. Doctors examined her repeatedly, often coldly and with hostility, and could not explain it.

• Reported: the weekly Passion ecstasies of 1938 to 1942 and the thirteen-year fast, documented by witnesses and physicians in her lifetime. The Church honors her heroic virtue; it has not declared the fast itself a miracle.

In 1944 she joined the Salesian Cooperators, the lay branch of the family of St. John Bosco, and offered her suffering for the salvation of souls and the holiness of young people. A Salesian priest, Father Umberto Pasquale, guided her from that year on.

Her death and her epitaph

Alexandrina died in Balazar on October 13, 1955, the anniversary of the last apparition of Our Lady of Fatima. Her last words were: "I am happy, because I am going to Heaven."

She had asked that her tomb speak to sinners. Its words, as the Vatican gives them in English, begin:

Sinners, if the dust of my body can be of help to save you, come close, walk over it, kick it around until it disappears. But never sin again: do not offend Jesus anymore!

Pope John Paul II beatified her in St. Peter's Square on April 25, 2004. "A 'spouse of blood'," he said, "she relived mystically Christ's passion and offered herself as a victim for sinners, receiving strength from the Eucharist: this became her only source of nourishment for the final 13 years of her life."

Symbols of Blessed Alexandrina in art

Alexandrina lived in the age of photography, and her images follow her photographs. Look for:

• A young woman with dark hair, smiling, in a bed or propped on pillows: her sickbed was her whole world for thirty years.
• Hands crossed over the heart, the pose of statues of her at Balazar, a sign of self-offering.
• A crucifix, for her sharing in the Passion.
• The Host, for the Eucharist that was her only food.

Feast day and prayer

We keep the feast of Blessed Alexandrina on October 13. Pilgrims come to her tomb in the parish church of Balazar, near Póvoa de Varzim. See the feast day calendar.

We know of no traditional prayer to her that we can quote. Let us ask Blessed Alexandrina to pray for the sick and bedridden, that they may find meaning in their suffering; for victims of violence; and for sinners, that they may turn back to Jesus, "for he is so good." Blessed Alexandrina of Balazar, pray for us.